Development of a Code Book to Examine International Media Framing of the Darfur Crisis

Abstract

This paper discusses the steps in the developing a code book for an international project examining the framing of media coverage of the Darfur Crisis in Sudan, which began in 2003. The code book was developed using English-language coverage of the Darfur crisis fromsix news organizations. Following this, the code book was then applied to the analysis of the media framing of the Darfur coverage in English, French, Arabic, Chinese, and Japanese media coverage of this issue. This paper reports on the steps taken to develop a code book appropriate for an international media studies project. Though the results of the project are available elsewhere (Mody, 2010), the process used to develop the code book has not been previously reported.